So the long-awaited September "report" to Congress is here. It's pretty dismal. Things are marginally better in Anbar province where the military has switched from being the arm of a Shi'ite national government to arming local Sunnis (read: militias) ostensibly for their struggle against Al Qaeda. Of course, they are really arming them for their potential struggle with the Shi'ite national government when the USA finally leaves, but they seem to think that isn't what's going on. Will the Sunni and Shi'ite groups agree to work out their differences at the ballot box rather than through armed conflict? Unlikely. The Shi'ites have too much to gain and the Sunni too much to lose. They can read the US media as well as we can. They know that within 2 years, US military presence will substantially diminish.
The testimony was awful. Petraeus answered Biden's question about whether the war was making the USA safer with an almost unbelievable response, "I haven't really thought about it." There was no confidence expressed in the Maliki regime at all by Crocker or Petraeus. The plan apparently is to end the surge by next summer, returning us to the halcyon days of 2006. I felt almost sorry for them, being asked to defend the administration's policies. As a general, Petraeus is not in the professional habit of saying "it can't be done." But his statement that he cannot really see past next summer speaks volumes. They think they can prevent Iraq from unraveling, but only at a continued cost of American lives. Progress, in terms of creating a stable political future, may be "attainable" as Crocker said, but nobody knows how to attain it. To sum up: Give War a Chance. As if we haven't been giving it a chance for 4 1/2 years.
The biggest asshole, predictably, was Lieberman. He asked Petraeus a leading question: was it time, he asked, for the Congress to give Petraeus the authority to pursue Iranian special forces (this Quds brigade thing) into Iranian territory? Petraeus visibly winced. He then responded carefully that this was something for Central Command to consider, not his forces in Iraq. In other words, we can't take on another war in Iran with our current configuration.
I am increasingly optimistic that Republicans will begin to defect from Bush and insist on some sort of legislative sunset to the war. The cost of the Iraq war in lives and money already dwarfs the cost of 9/11.
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Petraeus and Crocker
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Solidarity
There was a certain eloquence in the days that followed.
On September 11, 2001, NATO's governing North Atlantic Council issued a brief, two-paragraph statement. Its final lines broke from staid diplomatic condemnation and instead spoke straight from the heart.
"Our message to the people of the United States is that we are with you. Our message to those who perpetrated these unspeakable crimes is equally clear: you will not get away with it."Le Monde's front page editorial on September 13, 2001 was also unforgettable:
"Nous sommes tous Américains" (We are all Americans).Even the United Nations General Assembly, meeting in New York City just 24 hours later, managed to restrain itself and issue a concentrated, four-line condemnation of the attacks that expressed, "solidarity with the people and Government of the United States of America." The final sentence anticipated the future "war on terror": the nations of the world called "urgently" for the eradication of all terrorism, stressing that those "harbouring" terrorists would also be held to account. It just made sense to everyone.
In the days that followed, 100,000 marched in Ottawa bearing American and Canadian flags. Thousands marched also in the streets of Germany. Candlelight vigils were held across the world. Flowers were heaped outside U.S. embassies from Moscow to Sydney. People left us messages of solidarity everywhere.
As we remember the events of September 11th, let us also remember the events of September 12th. That spirit of solidarity can still be rekindled, and that gives me much hope.
Friday, September 07, 2007
Ring of Endless Light
My favorite author of books for young adults, Madeleine L'Engle, died yesterday. Her books inspired me as much as any teacher. This is my blog equivalent of a moment of silence.
"I wrote because I wanted to know what everything was about. My father, before I was born, had been gassed in the first World War, and I wanted to know why there were wars, why people hurt each other, why we couldn't get along together, and what made people tick. That's why I started to write stories."
--Madeleine L'Engle (1918 - 2007)
News Item: Hu Meets Rudd
New elections have not even been scheduled yet, but the oddsmakers are predicting Australian PM John Howard won't survive the next round, and apparently the Chinese have been taking note.
In Sydney for the upcoming APEC summit, Chinese President Hu Jintao met with opposition leader Kevin Rudd (Labour Party) for half an hour today. During the warm and friendly exchange, Mr. Rudd presented President Hu with a pair of opal cufflinks, and Hu invited Rudd and his family to the 2008 Beijing Olympics. An article in Melbourne's The Age offered this intriguing detail:
During a 30-minute conversation conducted entirely in Mandarin, Mr Hu complimented Mr Rudd on his fluency and thanked him for his commitment to developing the Australia-China relationship.[My Italics]Rudd, a former diplomat to China who spent several years there with his family, also addressed Hu in Chinese during the official welcoming luncheon. The Sydney Morning Herald observed appreciatively of Rudd's speech,
To anyone versed in Chinese culture, as is Rudd, these sentiments of family, children, cultural links and even the homework were right on the money for such an occasion. John Howard and [Foreign Minister] Alexander Downer could only look on and grimace.It also appears that the U.S. is reading from the same playbook as China. Despite his vocal support for John Howard, President George W. Bush's own 10-minute meeting with Rudd (in English) ran more than half an hour overtime, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pointedly refused to criticize Rudd's plan to withdraw troops from Iraq (as she had condemned those of the previous Labour leader) saying instead only that, "I would just hope that any Australian prime minister would make the decision on Australia's defense commitment based on what it would take to get the job done."
As for Hu's rather extraordinary personal invitation to attend the Beijing Olympics. The Age noted, "Prime Minister John Howard met Mr Hu yesterday, but it was not immediately clear if he had received a similar offer."
Wednesday, September 05, 2007
Meanwhile back in Pakistan...
Arrests in Germany this week point to Pakistan, rather than Iraq (again), as the main center of Al Qaeda training and planning. Three men, two German converts and a Turk, were arrested in Germany supposedly just before they launched a bomb attack on a US Air Force base in Ramstein, Germany. Check out the story here.
I think this will be good for Obama. He was recently dragged over the coals for suggesting that the US hunt for Al Qaeda leaders should not be overly concerned about the sovereignty claims of Pakistani leaders. His argument was that since we are pretty sure that Bin Ladin and other Al Qaeda big shots are in Pakistan, we should just go in a get them and stop letting the Pakistani government protect them.
Bush will also take this opportunity to crow about "the terrist threat" etc. He will of course not remind us that his argument in favor of the war in Iraq is that we are fighting them there so we don't have fight them here. Well, Germany's a long way from Iraq.
What do you all think?
PS: It's also worth noting, give our recent debate about the relevance of observed cultural differences, that two of the three arrested bomb plotters were ethnic German converts not Arabs. Granted, when dealing with individual actions it is best to rely on psychology rather than either political economy or anthropology.
Tuesday, September 04, 2007
Understanding Culture with Hofstede
One of the things that I spent a great deal of time studying in grad school was Cross-cultural communications. I knew I would be working in an international environment and I thought it would be important for me to study this. It is knowledge that has served me well. I can't remember if I have discussed this before of not. So forgive me if I have posted on this at some point in the past. A little repetition never hurts.
Cross Cultural communications is one of those fringe interdisciplinary topics that you can find in business studies as well as the social sciences. I never encountered it as a topic until I studied international business. It was present to a degree in anthropology and to some degree in sociology but it is not widely considered in the political sciences and RBR will probably agree that most hard core political scientist would laugh at the mere mention of it. And they would be right because there isn't a whole lot to know; it isn't terribly hard to understand once it is explained, and it makes you seem smart and entertaining at cocktail parties and Rotary Club meetings, which is sort of irritating. But I am not hard core, and I am entertaining at cocktail parties in general (that dancing on the table thing I do goes over big- just kidding.), so I don't mind bringing it up in response to some of Dr.S's questions in the posting about Iraq.
The "father" of this topic (It isn't really a field and shouldn't be considered as one) was a Dutchman named Geert Hofsteade. He proposed that there are core cultural values that effect social organization and interaction. The five values are: power distance (i.e. the level of acceptance in a society of inequality), Individualism vs. Collectivism, Masculinity vs. Femininity (the distribution of roles within a society and to what extent "male" values such as competition dominate over "female" values such as cooperation), Uncertainty Avoidance (i.e. and its ramification on decision making), Time Orientation (long term vs. short term planning.)
He then tested his theory by studying IBM employees throughout the world. At the time, the late 1970's early 1980's, IBM was the largest transnational around with a presence in some 64 countries. What he found was that these core values are not only prevalent, but consistent over time. Now, the Hofstede Model should not be taken too literally. It was applied to societies not individuals and I do not believe the statistical models have been updated. As RBR points out, culture changes over time. But then, so does everything else including political economy and government. And generalizations must always be questioned.
If you map out the cultural dimensions (as the link above does) you will see some very interesting patterns emerge. For instance, the countries with the least power distance tend to be the wealthiest. Low power distance correlates with high individualism and that usually correlates with high masculinity. And you start to get a picture of the U.S. Because highly masculine cultures value competition and aggressiveness, they tend to have a short-term orientation and more tolerant of ambiguity.
On the other end of spectrum, you get collective cultures, which tend to be present in developing nations. They tend to have more power distance, high femininity, which corresponds with a long-term orientation.
Now that doesn't mean that the U.S. only values competition and aggressiveness. We do value team work and cooperation. But when you index it statistically, you see that those characteristics associated with men are more significant than the others. every society values everything to a certain extent. Nothing is mutually exclusive.
In addition to this, there is a difference between high context and low context cultures. In a high context culture, behavior and communication is largely dictated by the context and a shared understanding of the situation. In other words, a great deal of things are left unsaid, but presumed. Germany is a high context culture as is Japan and most other Asian nations. The U.S. and the U.K. are low context cultures. We don't have a huge difference in behavior or communication dependent much less on a shared understanding of the situation. We explain everything.
All of this had a much larger influence on my thinking than even I realize at times. When you mention Iraq to me, I immediately begin the sorting process. "High context, big power distance, great tolerance for Ambiguity, collective, medium on the masculinity index". And RBR is correct that if I were to stop there, then I would be lazy and possibly prone to stereotypes. But I am neither of those things. So if I use Hofestede as a starting point, I can begin making sense of things such as, "Why didn't they overthrow Saddam on their own?" Then I start thinking about their history. And then it all makes more sense to me. From there, I consider their geopolitical situation, and I cross reference that with what Iraqis have told me, and perhaps I read a few things written by knowledgeable people, and on and on it goes. A picture starts to emerge. For me, I want to understand why they are where they are so that I can figure out where they are headed. Not everyone thinks this way, nor should they. But it is my starting point and I figured it would be a good opportunity to explain it.
Primary Madness Continues
This morning, Governor Granholm of Michigan signed a law moving her state's primary election to January 15th, a week ahead of New Hampshire and 1 day after the Iowa caucuses. New Hampshire and Iowa have yet to respond, but are expected to do so. NH law requires the primary be first in the country. Iowa law requires it to set its caucus 8 days before the first primary.
Now Wyoming Republicans announced on 9/1 they are moving their caucuses to January 5th. It is hard to see how we avoid December elections now.
Sunday, September 02, 2007
We were better off with Saddam
The sad lesson of Bush's disaster in Iraq is that sometimes the solution is worse than the problem. Before Bush's war, the threat Iraq posed to the U.S. was contained and minimal. Al-Qaeda had no quarter in Iraq. Saddam Hussein served to check Iranian ambition. The number of people harmed by Hussein's brutal dictatorship was comparatively small and the situation was stable. The vast majority of Iraqis enjoyed safety and employment. And Hussein was an old man anyhow: with his death there would have been a chance for a new era in Iraq.
Now Al-Qaeda has become entrenched in Iraq, and there is no check on Iranian aggression. Thirty thousand Americans have been wounded or killed; hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been wounded or killed. Civil order has given way to civil war. Torture is more widespread than under Hussein. Thanks to our initial "shock and awe" tactics, many Iraqis remain without adequate water or electricity. The ensuing health and refugee crisis may have claimed hundreds of thousands more lives even than the violence. Unemployment is rampant. The Green Zone government is stuck in an impasse, unable to govern itself, let alone the nation. People can't even leave their houses anymore for fear.
Bush has broken the Iraqi state, emboldened Iran, and given safe-haven to our enemies. And perhaps the greatest irony of all is that the end result of Bush's war may very well be the emergence of yet another brutal dictator in Iraq, just like Saddam Hussein. The hope of freedom and prosperity for the Iraqi people will have been lost for another generation.
Friday, August 31, 2007
Senator Warner (R-VA) Will Retire
Senator Warner of Virginia announced his retirement. Everyone is calling it a likely Democratic pickup by popular Mark Warner, former governor. Certainly, it makes Virginia a terrific Democratic battlefield in 2008 Senate elections.
Other likely Democratic pickups:
1. Colorado (Allard - Retiring)
2. NewHampshire (Sununu unpopular iin NE going blue)
3. Minnesota (first-term Coleman)
Other possibilities:
1. Oregon (turning blue state)
2. Maine (Collins, less popular than Snowe: see Sununu in NH)
Scandals:
1. New Mexico (Domenici/AG problems)
2. Alaska (Ted Stevens fiasco)
3. Idaho ('nuff said)
Democratic vulnerabilities:
1. Louisiana - Mary Landrieu (probably saved by Vitter's scandal)
2. South Dakota - Tim Johnson's health and party.
Likely result: Dems pick up at least 3 for 54-46 Senate (counting Lieberman and Sanders as Dems).
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Semper FIE on the the White House
September is on its way and that means the long awaited report from General Petraeus.
Reports to be released:
Sept 4: GAO report on Iraq
Sept 4-6: A report to Congress from its independent commission headed by Marine Gen. James Jones on Iraqi security forces.
Sept 10-15: White House Benchmark Report and testimony to Congress from Gen.Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker.
The big story this week is that the Congressionally Commissioned GAO report was leaked to the Washington Post by an "official" who feared that its conclusions would be watered down much as this month's National Intelligence Assessment was. In fact, the report hints that the "range of views" that actually exist in the Administration were not been reflected in past reports issued by the White House.
According to the leak, Iraq has failed to meet all but three of 18 congressionally mandated benchmarks.
Among the findings are the following:
1. Attacks against US troops are down, but attacks against Iraqis remain unchanged.
2. There has been little marked improvement in the capabilities of Iraqi security forces.
3. The Iraqi government has done nothing to resolve sectarian issues.
4. That the Bush Administration has failed to provide adequate data to support their past assessments of the war in Iraq.
This last "finding" is long overdue.
There has long been a rift between the civilian and military leadership. I will be very interested to hear what General Jones' report says. My bet is that it will corroborate the GAO report.
Monday, August 27, 2007
Family Values Strikes Again
Check out the Idaho Statesman, following Roll Call. Senator Larry Craig (R-Idaho) pleaded guilty to lewd conduct in a men's restroom in the Minneapolis airport.
Best quote from Senator Craig: "I was trying to handle this matter myself quickly and expeditiously." Er.. what did you want to handle, Senator?
Second best quote from the article: "Craig denied any lewd intentions and told police he has a "wide stance" in the bathroom and reached down to pick up a piece of paper from the floor."
What's your stance, Senator?
Another One Bites the Dust
I thought it would never happen. Today, however, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales announced his resignation effective September 17. I would have assumed this was just another rat leaving the sinking ship that is the Bush administration, but for one curious note in the NY Times report this morning:
As late as Sunday afternoon, Mr. Gonzales himself was denying through his spokesman that he was quitting. The spokesman, Brian Rohrekasse, said Sunday that he telephoned the attorney general about the reports of his imminent resignation, "and he said it wasn’t true — so I don’t know what more I can say."It could well be that Gonzales' spokesman was just lying--we have come to expect such antics in this administration, which has shown time and time again that they only care about putting out the right "message," not telling the truth. On the other hand, it could be that Gonzales lied to his spokesman, revealing just how shut out are those outside this administration's inner circle. Or perhaps Gonzales himself did not know the truth until last night, which would imply the move was Bush's decision, not Gonzales'--perhaps, with the departure of Karl Rove, Bush's remaining team felt less loyalty to Gonzales and no longer wanted the liability.
At any rate, it is a pleasure to see Alberto "Torture Memo" Gonzales head off to the ash-heap of history.
Friday, August 24, 2007
This is awesome
This has to be the only object in existence to contain the signatures of Nancy Pelosi, Tony Snow and Bill O'Reilly. It might be worth a bid if you have oodles of money. Find the auction here.
Go Stephen!
Good news
No doubt most of you (here in California anyway) have heard of this awful scheme, drafted by a Republican lawyer, to split California's electoral votes by district. This is going to be on the ballot next summer (if I recall correctly) and it's a terrible idea that will make it impossible for a Democrat to be elected president in 2008.
Well, just recently, our governor gave the idea a bit of a cold shoulder. Let's hope he stays that way. In the meantime, spread the word about how awful an idea this is.
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Bush Implies We Never Should Have Left Vietnam
Leave to Pea-Brain Bush to learn exactly the wrong about Vietnam in relation to Iraq. Bush today compared Iraq to Vietnam (see CNN.COM story here). I doubt there any people left who would think for a second, "Oh thank goodness! Bush finally gets it!" Just in case there are, guess what, he doesn't.
Did Bush see the similarities between the manufactured Golf of Tonkin Incident and Colin Powell's trip to the UN with the mysterious little test tube of white powder? Nope.
Bush thinks that the lesson to learn from Vietnam is that we pulled out too soon!! He argues that our pull out from Vietnam had a price that was paid by millions of innocent South East Asians. Sure that version of events may play well in certain neighborhoods in Southern California (Vietnamese exiles) or South Florida (Cuban exiles) but it's pure idiocy.
As long as the US was involved in Vietnam civilian casualties were through the roof. Millions of Vietnamese in both the North and South died or disappeared during our involvement in that war. Only in Cambodia did the death toll spike after we left because of Pol Pot's killing fields. Of course, we supported Pol Pot during that period because he was fighting the Vietnamese communists so...
If we had pulled out in 1969, SE Asia would have had major problems. If we had pulled out in 1980 SE Asia would have had major problems. As it was, we pulled out in 1975. And when we did, South Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos quickly fell to the communists in those countries. But it is likely that the same would have happened in 1969 or 1980. The are only two real differences that I can imagine resulting from a different pull out time.
One is how many Americans would have died. The second, is how long the region would have had to recover since our pull out. As it is, Vietnam is rapidly reforming, increasing its trade with the outside and becoming a China-like Communist regime in name only. Cambodia is beginning to put the Killing Fields tragedy behind them. These changes took time to happen and could only begin to happen once we pulled out.
By making this statement, Bush has shown (yet again) what an amazingly third rate intellect he really is.
Thursday, August 16, 2007
A different kind of CFC problem
Stock in Countrywide Financial Corporation has lost half its value since January, and the they have now drawn down an $11.5 billion line of credit to shore up liquidity problems. Moody's Investors Service has reduced Countrywide's credit rating to what the Wall Street Journal describes as, "the lowest investment-grade level, Baa3." A Merrill Lynch analyst openly speculated today on the possibility that Countrywide might go bankrupt. Presumably that event is still considered quite unlikely... but what would it mean for those of us who have mortgages through Countrywide?
The Mosque at Samarra, The Surge, and the Yazidi Massacre
On February 22, 2006 Sunni insurgents blew up the Great Mosque at Samarra, Iraq. This bombing and the violent response by Shiite militias is widely seen as moment when Iraq officially descended into full blown civil war.
The violence that has continued to rise with this civil war was supposedly the reason for the "surge" strategy. A major part of that strategy was concentrating US troops on the areas around Baghdad and gradually expanding a zone in which something like a secure environment could be established. Another part of the strategy was cracking down on the Shiite militias and reaching out to Sunni Arab tribal leaders in an effort to marginalize Al Qaeda units that operated in Iraq since the 2003 invasion. Sounds reasonable but the fear was that this would merely shift the violence to other areas. Well guess what...
Last week, Sunni insurgents massacred hundreds of a Kurdish speaking religious minority called Yazidis who live in villages near Mosul. Iraqi Kurdistan had been fairly quiet. The massacre may be intended to bring the Kurds fully into the civil war and further force Iraq into unmanageable chaos. The Kurds' leaders seem on the verge of obliging them. I've heard radio reports about this where Kurdish leaders vow to send the Peshmerga (Kurdish militias) into the suspected home villages of the massacre's perpetrators.
The parallels between the Yazidi massacres and the Samarra Mosque are striking. Al Qaeda is on the verge of being marginalized in the Sunni areas. So they provoke a war between the Sunni Arabs and the Kurds.
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
A Very Tough Ride
We are in for a tough ride. Take a look at the latest Ivy Zellman Report. It shows when all the ARMS are going to be resetting. It is an ugly graphic. So here is my question: What will that do to all of us and our 401Ks? I am not even looking at what has happened to mine these past weeks.
I am not an expert on the inner machinations of the Federal Reserve. But I am going to try and explain this in very clear terms. US sub-prime loans were packaged into investment tools such as bonds and hedge funds. These were then sold to investors. The bet was that the original borrowers (i.e. new home owners) would pay back their loans and investors would get the interest or the profit from having sold their share of the investment. When an investor (be it an individual or an institution) cashes out of such an investment, the bank goes into its safe (currency reserves) and gets the cash and gives it to the investor. All banks are required to keep a certain level of cash reserves on hand for just such events. However, when too many people or institutions want cash at the same time, the bank’s reserves run low and the bank has to borrow cash from another bank. When a bank borrows, it has to pay interest to the lending bank, just like anyone else. The FED likes to keep this overnight lending rate at 5.25%.
So with that info allow me to move forward. Investors around the world invested in U.S. mortgage backed securities, those sub-prime loans I mentioned above. One investor was Paribas. Paribas then sold those securities to its clients. However, last week, many of its clients wanted to cash out. Paribas risked running out of cash. So it suspended trading in the three funds that were exposed to the U.S. sub-prime market. This means that they halted redemptions. No more cashing in on investments that were tied to mortgage backed investments. This caused a panic as it was a public acknowledgement that the bank 1) couldn’t re-sell these investments to raise the cash to pay off investors and 2) that the bank had so many investors who wanted out of these securities (referred to as “distress selling”) that it didn’t have enough reserve to pay them off. Paribas needed more dollars. 3) the crash of the Sub-prime lending market in the U.S. is going global. This is very, very bad. Can you say “WORLD RECESSION”. For a good article on what this is doing to the global economy, see From The Australian .
In the sort term, this Paribas crisis, like the Bear Sterns crisis before it, drove the over-night lending rate for dollars up above the FEDs 5.25%. This threatened the trust that people have in the investment system. The level of trading is being driven by fear more than by calculated thinking. So, to make sure that there wasn’t a run on Paribas and to keep the overnight lending rate close to the5.25% target, the European Central Bank injected $154 billion into the market and the FED injected as additional $74 billion. The Bank of Japan and Reserve Bank of Australia also participated. They basically bought these crappy sub-prime securities from the bank with dollars.
What the ECB and the FED did as arrange a "Repo" or repurchase agreement. In short, the FED purchased $74 bil. in these mortgage backed securities from the Europeans with the understanding that once the European market stabilized, the Europeans would buy them back.
So logic will tell you that the value of the dollar against the EURO must have been affected. And you would be correct. Take a look below. 
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
The Mother of All October Surprises?
Wow. NY Times reports the Bush Administration is preparing to declare the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization. The Bush Administration continues to lay the groundwork for the use of force against Iran. Will they really to do it? I am starting to believe it now. Could plans for a military strike against Iran be Karl Rove's parting pièce de résistance for the 2008 Republican campaign?